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Hello readers,

I am sitting at my desk and typing this with my keyboard, however there is different wallpaper behind my screen and my feet are touching carpet instead of laminate. Yes, I have moved flat. This was stressful, which is why I had to pause on making much art. But I couldn't pause too long, for it is that time of year - I'm about to turn 30, which means I am legally obligated to submit a comic about the past year. If you're new around here, it may be of interest to you to know that I started this in 2021 - I've now documented the entire second half of my twenties!

Here's how the last half decade went:
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Turning 30 can be a pretty big deal. I don't feel too different to last year, or the year before. I guess I'm ready to kiss my twenties goodbye. Or perhaps it's just part of growing up that everything blurs together.

My parents used to talk about things that happened months, perhaps years ago, as recent. Oh, we went to see that film "recently", or, remember that trip we took, "not too long ago". I was incredulous - how could their sense of time be so completely wrong? Those things, to me, as a child/young adult, were clearly in the distant past, and I could usually remember exactly when. Now I'm starting to be the same.

I am like an app that's constantly updated with more features and becomes heavier and heavier, and thus slower to open. I've accumulated so much information, so many memories, and my brain has to somehow form a timeline out of them. I think of everything as having happened recently, when it very much was not recent. I am still convinced Sarah and I got together not THAT long ago (it's been 7 years), and that we hadn't lived in our first flat for THAT long (it was nearly 6 years).

When I think about something that is months away that does not seem far away anymore - because I know the time until that event will pass really quickly. I still vaguely remember that when starting a new school year as a child, the end of that year would have seemed unfathomably distant.

It's been scientifically proven that time feels like it's passing slower when you make new experiences, and, well, the reality is that there are not many novel experiences in day to day life once you're in an adult routine. I really think this perception of time that I have as an adult makes it harder to be in the moment, which is a key element (in my view) for being an artist. I am fighting tooth and nail to keep noticing. To not take anything for granted. To not let what I see and do be put into the dusty archive in the back of my brain.

Something that likely subconsciously inspired my writing/thinking for this over the past few months is Big Thief's most recent album Double Infinity, which released last September. Big Thief is probably my favourite band in the entire world. I've been listening to their music roughly since I first heard their debut album, back in 2016 or 2017 - nearly ten years ago! Their music has soundtracked every step of my adult life - every move, every heartbreak, every achievement. It seems as though they were also thinking about getting older when they were songwriting for their latest album, because growing up is a big theme on this album. Adrianne Lenker, the lead vocalist and songwriter, is only a few years older than me. Listening to Double Infinity I feel as though I'm really benefiting from her wisdom. I'm hearing about something that's happening to me, from someone whose art I love, and it's great.

Longing to go back again
To be someone I've never been
I echo and I seek to win
Mourning and celebrating

- Big Thief - Double Infinity

I based each section of the comic loosely on a memory from the past year.

Page 1 - my weekly commute to Stirling for work
Page 2 - visiting the art gallery in Dublin last December. The painting shown is "A boy eating Cherries" by Pierre Bonnard.
Page 3 - a bird sitting on the hedge of Montgomery Street Park
Page 4 - helping my nephew see over a wall
Page 5 - the new neighbourhood I've just moved to, and an old familiar place
Page 6 - people I love, dancing together at NYE

Thank you so much for sticking with me.

L x